Horses from many walks of life, communication through body language, tools used only for safety, never to train.

The Goal:

To discover how far Equestrian Art can be developed solely using body language.

Set Up for Tomorrow

Yesterday I did not pick up Ari’s hooves even though I know I can now. Yesterday I did not practice wrapping my arm all the way over his back, even though I know I can now. Yesterday I did not get close to Atlas more than once, even though we spent hours together. Yesterday I did not push Atlas’s boundaries beyond his firm comfort zone, not even once.

Instead I spent over six hours with the stallions, simply being attentive and choosing my actions around them wisely while reading the micro changes in their bodies to let me know if my choices from moment to moment were on an improving trend or a degrading trend (helping the horses feel better or feel worse).

This is the real work for Freedom Based Training®. Even though I did nothing outside the comfort zone for either horse yesterday, I feel more successful in my choices than most days.

I do not judge my success of today by the changes I see today, only by the changes I will see tomorrow.

More importantly, if the changes I see tomorrow surprise me and are for the worse not the better, that is a good thing not a bad thing. Because how else would I know that the things I did yesterday were choices that need to be weighed, considered, honed and developed?

This is the real work. Do the very best we know how to do in setting up for tomorrow, then tomorrow assess how well we did and do better. We can only do better when we know better and we can only know better by practicing and then assessing.

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

Thank you, Maya Angelou.

We have been taught as a society that we are judged on the improvements we can show. The value of our work is measurable by what has changed for the better toward our goals. I am reasonably comfortable with this, but I am not comfortable with the pressure and speed we are all expected to perform under.

What happens if you simply slow down and lower your expectations for success, or even your expectation to be able to judge success today? If all you do today is set up for success tomorrow, you can only judge today’s work tomorrow.

I think slowing down and lowering our expectations makes us the kind of horse trainer that horses might choose to be around and choose to work with cooperatively.

I ask myself, what can I do today that makes picking up Ari’s hooves easier tomorrow?

I ask myself, what can I do today that makes being closer to each other seem more feasible to Atlas tomorrow?

Then I hone the feel and the timing of the small tasks that come before the big tasks.

How many times can the horses feel good about the smaller tasks that build up to the bigger tasks tomorrow?

Tomorrow, perhaps picking up Ari’s hooves will feel so effortless that that task becomes the thing we practice in preparation for handling them with a rasp to trim the edges the following day. Or the day after that.

Tomorrow, perhaps being close to Atlas will feel so effortless that that task becomes the thing we practice in preparation for touching him.

The goal has changed from doing the thing outside the comfort zone (where society has taught us our worth is measured) to doing the thing just on the inside edge of the comfort zone.

Do the thing that is possible in order to improve the feelings of well-being associated with it. The thing that is barely possible to do… leave that for tomorrow.

Work on the foundation for what you want to do tomorrow and build that foundation so strongly that tomorrow you can do it with joy for both the horse and the human.

I am writing this for me as much as I am writing it for everyone else. At the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019, I know New Year’s resolutions abound for everyone.

I am suggesting, that you give yourself the gift of time in your resolutions.

Work today to build good feeling for the things you might do tomorrow. Work today on your set up for tomorrow, then look forward to learning from tomorrow how you can set up better in the future.

If you are always learning how to set up better for tomorrow, then in your learning you are always a success. This is what I want for myself in the year to come. This is the gift I want to give you in the year to come.

Set up for success, then assess how well set up for success you feel the following day, improve, and repeat.

If you would like some inspiration for how you do this, I just posted a three-part lecture on Patreon I think you really might enjoy. The lecture is part theory and part personal stories from the trek across Costa Rica we took in the beginning of the year, while we were filming Taming Wild: Pura Vida.

It is posted publicly so you can see it even if you are not a member yet. I do hope you enjoy it and decide to join us as a member for weekly updates and inspirations to make 2019 your best year ever, while at the same time also helping me in filming, documenting, and sharing the developments ahead!

Horses from many walks of life, communication through body language, tools used only for safety, never to train.

(Photo taken at Lime Kiln Point, a few miles from my home)

The Goal:

To discover how far Equestrian Art can be developed solely using body language.

A Grand Experiment

The full moon is reflecting off of every surface outside and the night is bright and quiet as I write. Here in the San Juan Islands we have just passed through an incredible windstorm that brought many trees down including one on the paddock fence, rattled all the roofs and kept the horses on edge for days. No one is hurt, but I think everyone is grateful for the quiet after the storm.

I find myself reflecting on intensity in life and the ways we all experience comfort and discomfort. The ways we sometimes protect ourselves from discomfort and the ways we sometimes walk head on into the wind and drink up the chaos and beauty of it all.

At the beginning of the week Atlas and Ari had another big fight, and this one resulted in Atlas becoming injured. Nothing life threatening, just a chest wound from a bite in the heat of battle. I understand stallions fight sometimes and they have their own social structures to build that might be outside the realms of my comfort zone. For that reason, I did not separate them immediately afterward, I watched and tried to understand.

Unfortunately, Atlas’ injury and ensuing weakness intensified his tendency to freeze and tune out the world which seemed to anger Ari and the attacks from Ari became more frequent and more intense in an effort to wake Atlas up. When I noticed Atlas starting to look over the fences in a searching way he never had before, I realized my space was simply too small for these two and all their differences. It was time to close the gates and separate them again, at least until Atlas healed.

Ari seems lonely since I separated them, and Atlas seems relieved. They still touch noses through the fence and the intensity of difference between them seems less dramatic every day. Atlas is still the first to pull away seemingly wanting more space to be peaceful. Ari only allows him that because the fence stops him from following and pushing for more attention.

I have had these issues before when putting Mustangs and domestic horses together. For Mustangs, staying aware is a life or death matter and they have very little tolerance for herd mates who freeze up and miss things happening around them. There is nothing more irritating to a horse that is quick to fight than a friend who is quick to freeze. Given enough space the horses always work it out, but space is a key factor and not a luxury I have with Ari and Atlas.

I have a strong belief that life is about learning. If we don’t know something, we get to try it, and then assess the results.

Life is all a grand experiment and we learn a little more every day.

I continue with my personal experimental work of Freedom Based Training® and it is so slow with these two that I am continually grateful Myrnah was such a generous partner to learn with in my first project. I remind myself over and over that slow isn’t bad, I am simply learning different things than I learned in the first project.

With Atlas there seems to a be a strong correlation between the time I invest simply being with him in ways he appreciates (meaning we are together with the buffer of space between us) and how much I can ask him to stretch his comfort zone. The thing I ask for when I can afford to stretch the comfort zone, is that he be interested or curious when I reach out to him.

I find he can match me reaching out to some degree, but it is a real effort for him, and you can see him grow more fatigued with each repetition. Some days he can manage a touch, the softest finger against nose moment. Other days all he can do is reach toward me, stopping short of any contact. If I ask too many times, he shuts down completely and pretends I do not exist. When this happens, any further movement I make toward him results in flight and I have hours of reinvestment in the relationship, being with him at distances he can handle before he is ready to try being interested in me again.

I think this is the grand experiment of the project. If I invest in doing primarily things the horses choose, and then, with good feel and timing asking for the things I might choose, how much can we ultimately do together?

I think of this on a spectrum, as I think of most things. It isn’t black or white, it isn’t all or nothing.

On one end of the spectrum are the things the horse might choose that we can do together. On the other end of the spectrum are the things I might choose that we can do together. In the middle of that is a whole world of variations we can play with.

In Freedom Based Training® I start with things the horse would choose, and I figure out the places around them it is most comfortable for me to be while we experience life together.

Then I start venturing into the places around them that are less comfortable, in small enough doses that it is reasonable for them.

With patient practice and repetition the horse’s comfort zone grows and the places I choose to be that were once uncomfortable become comfortable.

After we have established touch as a comfortable way of being together then I can start adding moments of pressure.

At first the pressure is what I call desensitizing pressure, that means I only aim for the pressure to cause interest or thinking of some sort, no movement yet.

Once desensitizing pressure is established then I can start to play with sensitizing pressure which means I expect the horse to move a little when I ask.

If I ask too much too soon, I will get fight or flight instead of yield and then I must go back and figure out what is possible in this relationship. What are we capable of together?

Investing hundreds of hours doing things the horses might choose is the foundation for everything else! This is the grand experiment of Freedom Based Training®, if I invest enough in doing the things the horse finds enjoyable, how much will the horse then be willing to try new things with me?

Then, after we do new things successfully can I link them emotionally to other things that are deep in the comfort zone, such as simply being together in harmony.

When we as human beings do training with tools or food rewards, we can ask the horse to do things for us because of an extrinsic motivator, then over time the horse learns to enjoy the things they are being asked to do and the extrinsic motivators become less and less necessary.

I am simply turning things around. If we take away all the obvious extrinsic motivators what is the natural evolution of building a relationship and the variety of things you can enjoy together in that relationship?

There are many days I wonder if I will get to the end of this experimental year and the horses will still have very little increase in skill to show for my time investment. The stallions are so much more difficult than Myrnah was for so many reasons and at this point I simply have no idea what our result will be at the end of this year.

The one thing I know is I asked for a challenge and I got it. Ari and Atlas are going to push my understanding of Freedom Based Training® far beyond anything I have learned before.

At this point with Atlas, sometimes we can touch and sometimes we can’t. I am learning to read probabilities of success from moment to moment with him based on more subtle signs than I have ever before noticed. Thank you, Atlas.

At this point with Ari I can handle every part of his body (apart from his mouth and his ears) and as I run my hands over his body, I find many moments of focus change, interest, and curiosity stimulated. When the weather is good and the stress levels are naturally low, I have started venturing into asking Ari to pick up a hoof for a moment or take a step back when I ask. I am learning to calm my greedy self that wants two steps of back up the very moment one step feels ok to Ari. I am learning to put my greed aside and read Ari’s probability of success instead.

Push a little when Ari is bored, release to flow when he is interested. Repeat as possible. The goal is to build an association of feeling good, being interested and curious when pressure is applied.

Thank you, Ari for helping me find the rhythm and consistency of developing new skills on your timeline.

How much is possible from this foundation? I don’t know, it is all a grand experiment!

If you are curious to learn with me as it all unfolds, join us on Patreon where I post update videos of the process every week.

Horses from many walks of life, communication through body language, tools used only for safety, never to train.

The Goal:

To discover how far Equestrian Art can be developed solely using body language.

Everybody Wants Something

Being alive means having needs and wants that may or may not get met and everyone has different strategies for trying to sort this out.

This past week my two stallions had some figuring out to do, and it was very interesting to watch.

I have found the Mustangs that come into my care have a higher need for awareness in the herd than the domestic horses. I think this comes from living out in the wild where there are real dangers and issues to solve with sometimes dire consequences if left unsolved. Horses die if they are not paying attention, or if their herd mates are not paying attention for them in time to warn them of danger.

Ari has proved to be no exception in this need for awareness that I often see in the Mustangs.

Unfortunately, Atlas, does not seem as aware and does not seem to share Ari’s desire for constant vigilance.

Atlas seems to want peace and quiet and regular predictable schedules with easy companionship while he recovers from the difficult life he lived before coming here.

Ari seems to want entertainment, awareness, variety, and interactive friends to go along with his eating and sleeping.

On the surface it would look like these two horses are completely incompatible, but I think they are in fact very good for each other.

From Ari, Atlas will learn to wake up and see the world more than he might naturally do.

From Atlas, Ari will learn to slow down, take a moment, consider the options and choose wisely before taking action.

I think the two of them are very good for each other, but that does not mean it is always easy.

The way I understand this is: If you don’t get what you want easily, there are different types of behavior you can use to try and get what you want in life. I categorize them in three ways: Freeze, Flight and Fight. Each one of these runs on a spectrum that includes both functional and dysfunctional behavior patterns.

Freeze on one side is the catatonic state of believing there is no hope, there is no effort worth making, you are never going to get what you want, and you should just give up and die now.

This spectrum of Freeze runs through variations such as:

Dysfunctional Freeze where the giving up is temporary and likely to explode into the chaos of Fight or Flight at any moment.

Functional Freeze where there is time for rest and recuperation, it is like giving up, but in a healthy way where there is time for the body to repair and recover and then wake up feeling better and ready to take positive action toward the things you want in life.

Then on the most positive side of that spectrum there is thinking, where you see ears, eyes, and noses moving as the senses gather all the information available to make the wisest decision possible to get what you want in life. Thinking before acting is on the freeze spectrum because there is no action being taken in the body yet.

Flight is the spectrum of moving away.

The extreme version is at high speed to leave behind all the things you do not want.

Then it runs through a spectrum of leaving quickly while checking behind you to see if leaving is necessary.

Or making small evasive maneuvers simply to lose the company of someone who is giving you things you do not want.

Then there is the good side of the spectrum where you have somewhere interesting to go (better than where you are now and no longer want to be), and if your friends are fast enough to keep up with you, they are welcome to come along.

Or when you really want your friends to come with you there is a yielding feeling to every movement where you step gently out of a partner’s way, making sure there is room for them next to you and that they can keep up every step of the way.

Fight is the spectrum of pressure – putting pressure on others.

At the extreme version, Fight is full attack and violence.

Less intense Fight is irritating or annoying and gets the attention of those around you.

The good side of Fight is playful, sparing, competing to see who is best.

Or even more gently, the curiosity and inquisitive nature of someone investigating to see what is possible if you nudge just a little bit.

What I have found is that everybody wants something in life and the higher their stress levels are the more likely they are to use extreme strategies to get what they want (or give up on what they want). Fight, Flight, or Freeze with intensity.

As stress comes down you will start to see the more functional sides of the spectrum in action. Everyone still wants what they want, but they start being more strategic and intelligent about getting it.

Last week we had a cold snap and the tension levels went up as they often do in a weather change. Ari’s wants, and Atlas’ wants started being expressed in ways that irritated the other and eventually there was a fight.

As Atlas became more and more frozen and unaware of everything, Ari became more and more attacking. Eventually Ari thought he could get the attention he wanted from Atlas by coming on fast with arched neck and striking front legs. Atlas snapped out of his Dysfunctional Freeze and attacked back, and since Atlas is much bigger and much stronger, it didn’t go well for Ari.

As often happens when Freeze and Fight meet up at the extreme side of the spectrum, it is a little bit heart stopping to watch, and I felt grateful that both Ari and Atlas pulled away with only minor scratches in spite of the intensity.

I managed to catch the end of the fight on camera and posted about it in the Taming Wild Patron group.

You can see the video here if you are interested in joining us behind the scenes of the movie filming process:

I enjoy posting here on the blog an outline of what I am learning as I do this project. Patreon gives me an opportunity to dig a little deeper and share more details with community who might be interested. I do hope you join us.

The interesting thing that came out of this week and the big fight, was the considerations about herd behavior and how we might choose to deal with that in our everyday interactions with our horses.

I was asked why I didn’t step in to break up the fight and my answer was:

I did not intervene in the fight because I think it is likely that intervening in this case would only cause them to brew stronger feelings that would come out later when I wasn’t there. So, I stood back and filmed and tried to learn from the experience as I watched.

Both Ari and I learned that Atlas is faster and stronger and more violent than he has ever shown before, if you push him too hard too fast. Good to know.

Atlas and I learned that Ari would feel better if everyone was more interested and responsive around him. Good to know, we can work on that.

So, if I am not going to intervene in a fight what would I do instead?

As a leader I think my best choice is to make a timely decision to walk away from brewing trouble, because getting stuck in the middle of a fight is not a good idea for anyone. When I see that tension is coming up, I walk away and make it clear that this is not a conversation I am interested in being part of. If either one of my horses followed my example there would be no more fights. I set the example and then I watch what choices they make.

They want what they want, and I will be able to see the level of stress they are feeling by the type of choices they make with each other.

I think this action of walking away does a couple of things for the herd dynamic. First, it shows the horses that walking away from a fight is an option, and that there is a good way to walk away. When I walk away I do it early so I do not have to run, I keep my steps steady and rhythmic, and I turn to face the action as soon as possible so the horses know I am paying attention.

I believe most fights are simply one horse’s need for more attention. Essentially, loneliness or insecurity are the causes of fighting. If there is enough attention given there is no need to push for more, with fighting actions.

Sometimes it seems fights are about resources (food or friends), but more often than not I see horses use resources as a means to an end to get more attention.

Atlas wants to be very quiet, introverted, and focused on eating and sleeping. Ari wants to be interactive and playful. Is one of them more right than the other? They both want what they want, and this week they had to fight for their rights to get what they wanted. Atlas is bigger and stronger, and he won temporarily. Ari isn’t going to stop wanting what he wants, he is just going to have to get smarter about how he goes about getting it.

Now, what about if I see a fight brewing, and I choose to step in the middle and protect one horse from the other? This is the more dominant management of the situation, and if there is a safety issue, I will do this, or if I am in a hurry to impress one horse more than the other, I might take sides like this. However, I believe the more passive leadership style has a deeper impact on the herd dynamics and greater learning value for everyone involved if you have the time and space to allow it.

If I dominantly protect one horse from the other, I do win a sort of appreciation from both horses, but unless I have some plan to help them both with the underlying need for the fight in the first place, it is only a temporary solution.

When I step in dominantly and stop a fight, I am simply telling them that my wants and needs override theirs, but when I am no longer there, they still will work out which of them gets to decide what is happening.

When instead I step away and then pay attention, I show them an alternate option to sorting out differences.

If Atlas could step away from Ari, but then give him full attention, there would be no need for the fight because Ari’s needs would be filled. If Ari could work around Atlas, stepping in and out of his comfort zone, Atlas would learn to be more aware. But this sort of helping of the other one is only going to happen gradually as their habitual stress levels get lower and as they learn what the other wants and needs.

Lowering the stress levels for everyone involved, that is my job. My hope is that as I lead by example, it will be easier and easier for my horses to choose similar healthy actions for getting what they want in life.

Only time will tell, and for now I am fascinated to be experimenting with all the possibilities in front of me.

I really do hope you join us on Patreon.com to see the weekly videos of the process and the making of the entire movie!

Horses from many walks of life, communication through body language, tools used only for safety, never to train.

The Goal:

To discover how far Equestrian Art can be developed solely using body language.

When I Make Mistakes…

The fact is, I am human and I make mistakes. I don’t often talk about those mistakes because I am striving to move past them and focus, focus, focus, on the solutions instead the problems.

I encourage my students to do the same thing. Notice your mistake, get through it as best you can, learn from it and make a better game plan for what you do next, but whatever you do, don’t dwell on what went wrong.

You see, I believe our brain tries hard to create the things we think about. So much of what we do is subconscious, and most of the time I don’t know why I moved my left pinky finger, or wrinkled my nose or looked at the ground before I started to walk. Maybe those things don’t matter, or maybe to a horse who speaks body language fluently I just said many confusing things all at the same time.

The understanding of the subconscious mind and its tendency to try and create what we focus on, leads me to this conclusion: If I am thinking hard about all the times I have made mistakes causing my horse to lose confidence, then subconsciously my brain starts to recreate the tiny behaviors that led to those situations and then without consciously knowing it I am causing mistakes to happen all over again.

If instead I stay focused on the solutions, my subconscious will help me recreate all the small body behaviors that made me successful developing positive solutions at other times.

When speaking with a horse using body language, I feel often like I am still in kindergarten in the first levels of fluency. Regardless of my level of conscious skill the thing I CAN know is the results I get. Each set of results leads me to assess what we did to achieve that, thereby educating me for future patterns of behavior that get the kind of results I want with my horses.

Every horse is different, and every horse has slightly different likes and dislikes. Every horse teaches me slightly different things about this beautiful, complex language.

Let’s talk for a moment about the nuts and bolts of what a mistake is with horses.

A mistake is something that causes you or the horse to not want to be together.

We know we made a mistake because there was more Fight, Flight, or Freeze in the relationship than one of the partners was comfortable with.

Now, for simplicity I am going to talk only in terms of Freedom Based Training® where there are no food rewards to keep a horse with you and there are no halters, ropes, or fences to keep a horse from walking away. (Once you add the tools that hold a horse close to you the mistakes often get a lot bigger before you realize they were mistakes.)

If I make a choice that causes a Fight reaction that is my biggest kind of mistake, because that one can be quickly dangerous.

If I make a choice that causes a Flight reaction, that is not so bad because it just means we need to find harmony and make amends from a greater distance for a while. Distance is not my first choice, but there is nothing unsafe about it.

If I make a choice that causes Freeze, that is only a problem to the degree that I am impatient. Freeze is something I can do with the horse and it can be a bonding, relationship building time for us. But only if I have enough patience and wisdom to wait for that Freeze state to evolve into a better feeling of Thinking, Yielding or Playing.

Any time I make a mistake that causes Fight, Flight, or Freeze, I need to figure out what to do next.

Freeze is the easiest to solve.

Option one:

I walk around the space looking carefully in every direction for danger as I move, because making the horse feel like it has a partner looking out for it, will cause it to feel safer and will minimize the extremity of Fight or Flight that might occur after a dysfunctional Freeze. The movement of my body also has a small degree of effectiveness lowering a horse’s stress. I can come back into flow with the horse when I see they are thinking again.

Option two:

I wait in harmony with the horse because I believe the next thing to happen (no matter how long it takes) is that the horse will feel better and start to think.

Flight is a little more difficult to solve because I have a strong desire to stay in the relationship (not abandoning the horse), balanced with a strong desire to understand their request for more distance from me.

Option one:

If I think the Flight will be stronger than I can keep up with, I walk strongly in the opposite direction that the horse is moving to show them I am brave and will intercept any danger coming from that direction. (I know that seems silly if they are running from me, but it also lets the horse know I understand they would like to be farther away from me.) Once you see the horse settle you can start rebuilding the relationship from the distance the horse tells you they are comfortable with.

Option two is:

If I think the Flight will be short and might turn to yielding quickly (the horse moving in a way I can match and flow with) I can follow them and find harmony with them again as soon as possible.

Fight is the most difficult mistake result to solve for, but it does happen sometimes so I need to be prepared for that also.

Option one: If I think this Fight is only getting worse, run like hell and live to make better choices another day! (Yes, I am not proud of this, but I have done it.)

Option two: If I think the Fight will be brief and resolve to any other possibility quickly, I will surprise the horse to break their pattern. For safety, I teach all my horses that ANY other response to my mistakes is preferable to Fight. To surprise a horse is quite dominant, it usually makes the horse so uncomfortable they immediately choose Flight instead of Fight and that is safer. My favorite methods of surprise are to jump up and down, or to throw my hands in the air dramatically as I step closer to the horse.

In this option, I have chosen to make a second less dangerous mistake (causing Flight) to break the pattern of the first mistake that caused Fight. There are a couple of problems with this option that everyone needs to be aware of before they try it.

The first problem is that an angry horse will attack more violently if you make the wrong choice and fail to cause Flight when you try to surprise them.

The second problem is if you make too many mistakes and use surprise too often, it stops being surprising and simply becomes annoying instead, which can cause a more violent attack.

The third problem is even if you succeed in surprising them into Flight, then you need to address that smaller mistake and rebuild the relationship from the bigger distance that came from the Flight behavior.

With Atlas who came to me with a history of aggression I had to be extremely careful that I didn’t make a mistake we would not be able to recover from.

The way I did this was to invest in our distance relationship. I was fully prepared to work from outside the fences for as long as I needed to and the goal was to gently and consistently teach Atlas that moving away from me was a more successful strategy for him to get comfortable than moving toward me.

When we think of the spectrum from Fight to Play, it all includes an aspect of moving closer to each other.

When we think of the spectrum from Flight to Yield, it all includes an aspect of moving away from each other.

Any horse with an aggression problem is simply a horse who has found more comfort moving closer to others than they find moving away and this needs to be balanced out the other way before the aggression can soften and the horse can be safe to be around.

I knew I needed hundreds of hours of reinforcing moving away behavior with Atlas before I ever found myself in a situation where I had to surprise him out of a fight instinct. It would only be with those hundreds of hours of foundation in teaching him yielding that I would be safe enough to surprise him without risking the instinctual violent attack that had served him so well in his past life.

I taught Atlas this gently from a safe distance without ever needing to confront him.

Every time he moved toward me I would either take one extra step toward him (this made him less comfortable because he did not want me close to him). Or, I would start walking around the paddock (on the outside of the fence if I felt I needed it for safety) and I wouldn’t stop walking and return to flow with him until he moved some part of his body away from me. The walking around the paddock worked because horses prefer harmony and flow with their herd and I only gave Atlas that harmony and flow if he moved away from me at least a little.

The other reinforcement for yielding we practiced was following Atlas. When Atlas walked to the water trough, I followed him in flow (at a distance he was comfortable with), but then I took one more step than he did. This way when we were standing at the trough and he was feeling that good feeling of drinking water it was after I had just pushed into his space, (not him pushing into mine). The same was true when he walked to his favorite outlook spot on the hill or to his favorite rolling spot or just the place in the sun he wanted to stand. Atlas got what he wanted just after I pushed into his space a little bit.

This taught Atlas that good feelings happened after I pushed a little bit closer to him. Less comfortable feelings happened after Atlas pushed closer to me.

When Atlas pulled away from me in any way that looked like he would not like to be followed I would pull away also and make the space between us bigger. This respect for his preferences is something that set him up to respect my preferences as well. My job is to set the tone for the relationship and then show Atlas that acting in this way together results in good feelings for him.

Now, I know that this early work Atlas and I did together is the reason why I still cannot touch him and all our relationship building is still being practiced at the non-touching distances. However, the safety I feel around him now is worth far more to me than any amount of touching ever could be.

This evening when I was working with Ari, I mistakenly stayed too close for too long next to Atlas who was eating from the same hay net as Ari. Atlas had a moment of anger at me pinning his ears, and while that mistake of mine might have cost dearly in the beginning of our relationship, it was not at all difficult for us to manage tonight. I simply took my hand quickly out of my pocket and threw it into the air dramatically and Atlas stepped hurriedly away in a few steps of flight, followed by a change of focus, his ears coming forward and a gentle reach out of his nose to check in with me that all was right between us again.

(This picture is from a different day and a different mistake, but it was one caught on camera so I thought I would share it with you)

The important part though, is that I noticed what mistake I had made that caused Atlas’s anger in the first place this evening. Even if I know what to do about it when I make a mistake, I am better off working at appropriate distances with good feel and timing so I never need to fix the problem in the first place.

I aim to teach my horses to Think, Yield, and Play so completely they believe those are their best choices of action for getting the things in life they want. If we can strengthen the good stuff enough, we theoretically never will make a mistake that results in Fight, Flight, or Freeze.

Yes, I know we are all mortal and we all make mistakes that will need to be managed. Hopefully this blog post helps you to understand how you might manage those potential mistakes.

More importantly though, I hope you are inspired to invest more time in developing the Think, the Yield, and the Play in your relationships with your horses.

Join us on Patreon for more ongoing discussions about Freedom Based Training® and the filming of the movie “Taming Wild: Evolution”. Thank you to my current patrons for asking all the right questions that inspired this blog post.

Horses from many walks of life, communication through body language, tools used only for safety, never to train.

The Goal:

To discover how far Equestrian Art can be developed solely using body language.

Ari’s Choices

This week everything has come together with the stallions as I had hoped it would and I am counseling myself to be more pleased and content with the events than impatient with the timeline.

I am finding that my experience with Myrnah during the first movie set my expectation of developmental time line at a rate that is intensely different than the one I am living currently with Ari and Atlas. Now I get to live what I preach and let the horses set the timeline for progress.

Trust the process Elsa!

Ari has been here a couple of weeks now and honestly, I thought we would be much farther along than we are currently. I adore him and his decisions make me grin, but wow does he have a lot of opinions and decisions to make! Mostly it seems like he just wants me to stay out of his way so he can do the thing he has planned. I don’t know how much of this is the fact that he is an eight-year-old stallion instead of the four-year-old mare I am comparing him to in Myrnah, or how much is just his personality shining through, in all the dynamic unique beauty I chose him for. He will teach me things, of that I am sure!

In this process of Freedom Based Training®, with any horse, I start with a meditation of being around the horse’s body in all the places and all the different distances. As I do this I study the feel and timing of when it is best for me to move from one place to the next. This is the study of Passive Leadership.

Then I start adding more movement around them with the goal of helping them feel better before I settle into the original exercise again. This is the study of Supportive Leadership.

Once I have the foundation of those two ideas in place, then I can start asking the horse to do something I have in mind. This is the study of Assertive Leadership.

If my request of the horse causes them significant discomfort between the time I ask and the time they say yes to me, we are stepping into the study of Insistent Leadership.

If my request of a horse causes them to respond with fight, flight or freeze behaviors that I need to control, manage, or force to change then we are stepping into the practice of Dominant Leadership. This is where we usually need some sort of a tool to manage the horse (a rope, a food reward, a fence or something to use that is more motivating than our simple human body).

In Freedom Based Training® and this project with the stallions filming “Taming Wild: Evolution”, the process is about developing horse and the relationship using leadership on the spectrum between Passive and Insistent simply because we choose not to use the equipment that would allow us to be Dominant effectively.

When we take away the ability to dominate, what happens is we must learn to read the horse better, and our decision-making process as trainers gets honed to a whole new level.

I found while filming the first movie with Myrnah, I learned more about being a horse trainer in that one year, than I had in my previous thirty years of life all put together. I have no doubt this current year with the stallions will have a similar impact on me. The experience of training without any means to dominate puts me in a position where I must study every tiny detail of cause and effect with a level of subtlety that all of us as trainers often fail to recognize when we are able to push for a result using dominance.

Ari is indeed honing my skill as a trainer, and where I feel the work deeply is in my patience fatigue this last couple of weeks. My brain gets tired when Ari and I seem to be slower than I think we should be from one level of understanding to the next. That is when the impatient part of me wants to gloss over the details and push toward a tangible result. That is not how Freedom Based Training® works. I must take whatever time Ari tells me he needs and notice every tiny detail of cause and effect he shows me. All the details are an opportunity to learn something more.

Ari and I established comfort in Passive and Supportive Leadership in the first couple of days, and when I started to ask him for a specific action, that was established quickly also with the caveat that he figured out immediately, he could ask me for things as well. This is where my patience was honed, and where he was distinctly different than Myrnah in the first project.

With Ari, I could ask him to reach out and touch my hand, changing his focus and asking him to connect with me. Ari was quick to learn this and quick to easily say yes to it, then he used the same action on me.

He discovered if he reached out to me, and asked to touch my hand I would make things easier for him and he liked easier. In his case, easier was for me to stand farther away than a touching distance, preferably about a horse length away.

Ari was reasonably comfortable with me close enough to touch him, but he was adamant that I would not actually touch him, and so asking me to stand farther away made him feel easier about our relationship. If I pushed the issue, he used just enough fight or flight to explain to me that he was not ready for any touching and that was absolutely to be respected.

For two weeks, Ari would let me come close for a few moments, and then he would politely ask me to step away again and again and again and again.

I began to fear I would never get that tag off his neck and we would be stuck at this impasse forever. It didn’t exactly feel like a plateau of progress, because I could see his confidence in me growing every day in the softness of his eyes and the rhythm of his movements, but touching was off limits and without the use of tools there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it. So, we simply continued to put in the time doing the things we could do together, while watching Ari blossom in enjoying his new home.

Then one day, things changed unexpectedly and Ari was suddenly ready for me to touch him.

I was standing close to him for a long time, and he didn’t reach out to me asking me to step away. So, I reached my hand out under his nose to offer him the chance to ask me to step away and he did not. Ever so gently I let my hand drift up to his cheek to slowly stroke it, coming directly back down to his nose again to see if he wanted to touch me and ask me to step away, but he did not, Ari let me stoke him several times without any sign of fight or flight before he finally pushed his nose gently against my fingers and told me he had had enough of closeness and was ready for the easier distance between us.

In that moment, the barrier between us melted and a little at a time the touching distance became something else we could do together.

The next day Ari let me take the tag off from around his neck and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. We could do this and while Ari was going to push me to learn and grow, and be more patient than I was accustomed to, he wasn’t asking me anything unreasonable. I simply needed to trust the process and accept the time frame he chose.

That same day Ari let me take his tag off, we turned him and Atlas out together. Opening all the gates and letting them have the entire space was better than Christmas for me. Horses deserve to have friends and freedom and watching them revel in that freedom of space with their friends is simply awesome.

I believe safety comes first, so I gave the two stallions time to mirror and match each other’s movements from across the fences for their first couple of weeks here. Once I was seeing them regularly take naps side by side with the fence between them, matching feet and body postures then I knew they were ready for more freedom to push close to each other when they chose without a risk of injury.

Then easily, with very little chaos they were together full time, eating hay from the same hay net for hours at a time, drinking together, playing together and moving everywhere together.

Ari and Atlas still have some dominance games to play and can squeal and strike and rear like stallions do, but it seems within reason and something everyone is comfortable with.

Now starts a new chapter for me and the stallions, all of us together, learning from each other. I promise to keep you updated as we progress.

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Horses from many walks of life, communication through body language, tools used only for safety, never to train.

The Goal:

To discover how far Equestrian Art can be developed solely using body language.

Valuing Easy

This week Atlas touched me for the very first time. It was an incredible welling up of courage for him to reach that last couple of inches and make contact, his nose to my fingers. We had put in over a hundred hours of time BEING together at distances that were comfortable for him. We had slowly and gently increased the variety of ways and places we could share space. Some days I wondered if he would ever be brave enough to touch, perhaps this being together with a buffer of air always between us, was all we would ever be able to do.

Some days when I was particularly sad or frustrated by the lack of trust I could see in my two stallions, I stepped away to go visit Myrnah and Cleo and bury my face in their manes and feel the sweet yielding softness of their dense fur under my fingers. Reminding myself all the while that everything develops, and I need to give Atlas and Ari time, they will not stay the same forever. With gentle feel and timing from me, over time, they too will learn that people being close is a good and wonderful thing.

The day Atlas finally touched me, he had been staring for the longest time, ears pricked, nostrils softly flaring as he breathed in the scent of me. My hand was outstretched and his neck was outstretched in return toward me. This reaching toward each other was something I had been developing with him, always respecting his comfortable buffer of air between us and always retreating to an easier distance before that curiosity, bravery, and interest in me waned. In this particular moment, it was the end of the day, and almost dark, and before I could pull my hand away and return to my lookout post several horse lengths away from Atlas, he made a bold reach and touched my fingers firmly with the bridge of his soft muzzle, square between the nostrils.

As soon as Atlas felt his nose actually touch my fingers, panic took over and he leapt away from me with a dramatic explosion of limbs, scrambling for traction to propel him far away from this new sensation. I moved also, but with more steady quiet rhythm, traveling around him in a circular fashion looking for the next place of harmony we could find together.

In Atlas’ sudden burst of courage, he had tried to do too much too soon, and it had scared him.

We took some time to do things he was good at, and share space in ways he felt confident about, then before the end of the session we had returned to practicing those brief moments where I could reach toward him while he reached toward me, and then I could retreat to an easier distance with appropriate timing, while his bravery and curiosity were still strong.

I think this is one of the greatest gifts of Freedom Based Training®. The necessity of valuing what is easy in a partnership, more than we value the pushing forward and making progress into the new and interesting.

When we have tools, such as food rewards or halters or flags or fences to push a horse against, the horse becomes willing to spend more time in discomfort than if we do not have those things.

Because a horse wants the apple or carrot, the horse will try hard to hold themselves in the discomfort of learning to find the action necessary to earn them that food reward. Because the horse has a halter on and knows it cannot leave, it will try harder to tolerate the discomfort of learning something new to find where the pressure is relieved and life feels easier again. Horses become willing to stretch their comfort zones and tolerate the discomfort of learning and growing faster than they might naturally choose, when we use extrinsic motivators.

In Freedom Based Training® we still exist in a world where the horse feels more pressure sometimes and less pressure other times, but the only reward for tolerating discomfort is the ease of flow and harmony between horse and human that comes afterward. This allows the horse more room to think about their voluntary participation in any event.

With Freedom Based Training® we spend hundreds of hours investing in everything that is easy together so that the horse grows in confidence that being in a relationship with us is about feeling good together. Only from that basis can the horse learn to tolerate moments of learning discomfort, then over time, the horse will develop an acceptance of learning discomfort, and then with more time the horse starts to look forward to and enjoy learning because it is more interesting than all the things the horse already knows.

First though, we need to invest in easy!

With Atlas and Ari I am committed to listening to them about what they think is easy and what they think is difficult. I started by standing outside the fences and paying attention to their body language. Did they move away from me, or toward me? Did they want more space from me or less? How many different variations of together could we experience over and over and over again that Atlas and Ari considered easy?

The value of easy is not talked about enough in horse training.

We need so many repetitions of easy that the horse starts looking voluntarily for something interesting.

Hopefully horses reach for the next new piece of learning within the range of what they can tolerate. If they overstep what they are capable of doing, like Atlas did when he touched me for the first time, we have to consider easy again, and building confidence from the place of doing easy things.

In Atlas’ case, I have chosen to carefully slow him down so he doesn’t scare himself again. When he reaches for me, I make sure I have enough buffer of air between us that I have time to pull away before he makes contact.

Again and again Atlas gets to reach for me and have me pull away to an easy and comfortable distance before he makes contact.

I reach toward Atlas, Atlas reaches toward me, and then before the whiskers brush my hand, I confidently walk away to the distance I know is easy.

Will this take a hundred repetitions or a thousand before we feel the stress is low enough to actually touch in a way that doesn’t scare Atlas? I don’t know, but I know what I am looking for.

When Atlas touched me the first time, he wanted to be brave, but his ears and eyes were locked staring at me in a frozen position that let me know that his brain wasn’t fully in a thinking operative mode. I hadn’t planned for us to touch, but Atlas moved so quickly I didn’t have time to protect him from his brash decision.

Lesson learned, no real harm done, now I am more careful. Now Atlas and I practice reaching toward each other with large gaps of time spent at the easy distance between each effort to try something new. This new thing we are doing demands respect, because it isn’t easy yet.

When something becomes easy we will know because we will see the brain is more likely to start thinking instead of reacting. We will see the eyes and ears move softly, instead of held in a rigid freeze. When the brain is frozen, the reaction of fight or flight is likely to follow, when the brain is thinking it will move easily into yielding or playing.

I know the theory, but I will admit it is real work for me to practice all that I preach. Going on the fifth hour of a day with the stallions, often my brain is sluggish and I just want something interesting to happen. Easy feels boring and I don’t want to practice the same thing over again and again and again.

This is where the real work is. This is where I dig deep and I learn. How many different variations of paying attention can I practice, while the stallions get to experience easy with me?

It is an ongoing journey, but I know I will be better for it in the long run. Filming this movie is a huge motivation for me to tolerate the discomfort of learning. So, I dig in and watch and plan and practice everything that is easy, in as many variations as I can come up with. I have to believe in the process and do the work, that is how I learn.

If you are interested in more details and discussions, we have both ongoing in the Patreon Group and would love you to join us there!

These early days of the first touches with the stallions are precious in their own ways, yet I am also dreaming of all the dynamic and interesting learning ahead of us… only when Atlas and Ari are ready of course!

Horses from many walks of life, communication through body language, tools used only for safety, never to train.

The Goal:

To discover how far Equestrian Art can be developed solely using body language.

Introducing Arion

This week was a whirlwind of activity as it came time to go pick up our second stallion for the filming of “Taming Wild: Evolution”. Kevin and I took the amazingly beautiful eighteen-hour drive down to Nevada on Tuesday and then returned home with Arion driving through Wednesday night and arriving home with him Thursday.

When we arrived at the corrals Ari was waiting for us in a small corral next to the loading chute. As we spent a few minutes with the brand inspector getting all the necessary paperwork done, I marveled at the way Ari seemed at ease and at home, as if he owned the space he was living in. He might have been captive, but he didn’t act like it.

He walked down the chute and into the trailer with more rhythm and confidence than any other mustang I have ever picked up, and then we started the long trip without fanfare.

Bringing a wild mustang home, I always feel deeply for them as they are exposed to so many new and dramatic experiences from the rocking of the horse trailer they must balance in, to the semi-trucks passing, and the lights flashing around them. In Ari’s case, he handled all this chaos of the travel with an unusual calm interest in everything. As I drove I could feel him shifting a little from one side of the trailer to the other as he watched the world, but there were surprisingly few sharp movements.

That is the beautiful thing about mustangs, their adaptability. Mustangs grow up traveling constantly and encountering new things every day with the support of their family around them. While the trip into domestic life may seem shocking, the average mustang is well prepared to adapt.

Ari is from a herd management area in Nevada known as the Eagle HMA, and to give you some sense of his ability to adapt, here is a description of where he is from.

Covering 660,610 acres, the Eagle HMA consists of large mountain ranges bounded by valleys. Elevations range from about 5,673 feet in the valleys to as high as 9,296 feet on Mt. Wilson. The Eagle HMA affords a classic Great Basin environment marked by extremes of every kind. Summertime temperatures can exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and winter lows can fall well below zero or lower. Precipitation in eastern Nevada occurs mostly in the winter in the form of snow with sparse summer moisture. As a result of limited water, the HMA is prone to drought every few years. Wildlife in the area includes mule deer, elk, mountain lions, coyotes, and bobcats. There are also prairie falcon, ravens, quail, starlings, and horned larks. Reptiles include many species of lizards, venomous (rattlesnakes) and non-venomous snakes.

In comparison to where Ari grew up for the first eight years of his life, he now has landed in the softest lush paradise. He has no idea how much easier this winter will be for him than winters past.

As for me, I have big plans, goals, and dreams for Ari and I. Watching him waltz into his new paddock like he owns it makes me grateful for his history and where he comes from.

I am going to need a great deal of adaptability from this horse as he settles into domestic life with me, and he is showing that he is up to the challenge.

For the moment, I have Atlas and Ari in separate paddocks. They can see each other but not touch yet. Atlas pretends there is no other horse on the property, and Ari watches Atlas quietly from the hill. Once Ari has had a chance to rest and get comfortable in his new home we will let them in together to have a more normal social horse life. I have no idea what that will look like with these two stallions, but I look forward to seeing it all evolve.

Until then, each horse gets to have me for a companion as much of every day as I can manage.

Freedom Based Training® is quiet work, spending time together and getting to know each other one quiet moment at a time. There are a million details of how this works and I am sure these two stallions will teach me a million more details about how to do this work better.

If you are curious about the details, join us for weekly videos and conversations on:

Horses from many walks of life, communication through body language, tools used only for safety, never to train.

The Goal:

To discover how far Equestrian Art can be developed solely using body language.

“First you go with the horse”

I have so much respect for this quote from Tom Dorrance;

“First you go with the horse. Then the horse goes with you. Then you go together.”

I am not sure he ever meant the first part to be taken to the extreme I do, but I would like to imagine he would be intrigued if he were here looking over my shoulder.

I chose Atlas to join me for this project because he had a reputation for being a dangerous aggressive horse, and I wanted to learn something about that. The interesting thing is, almost none of that aggression has shown up in our almost 75 hours of training we have done in the last four weeks. I fully believe if I do my job right, we never need to trigger those past habits of aggression. Instead we will perpetually strengthen habits of conscientious communication, until Atlas has no need to use aggression with humans any more.

When I read his body language and hear him tell me about his discomfort and then respond appropriately, then he does not need to yell at me about it with aggression. If you look at his ears, you can clearly see the distances Atlas is comfortable with here and the distance he is learning to tolerate.

If I barged in any closer, he might feel forced to explain to me more clearly how he felt about it at this stage of our relationship. So I listen carefully and respond appropriately now, setting an example for Atlas of how he might do that for me later in our relationship.

In order to build the communication between us I have two different kinds of leadership I am using and a counter balance of flow and harmony.

During meal times and rest times we often practice going between:

1. Supportive leadership (using more movement or intensity around the horse to cause the horse to feel better).

and…

2. Passive leadership (the art of moving to different physical position in relation to the horse at the best possible time).

and…

3. Flow (The harmony and ease of BEING together).

Just like all of us, horses sometimes get stuck in patterns of thought that make them feel grumpy or irritated, or downright angry.

With a little supportive leadership used at an appropriate distance it feels good to help Atlas find his inner zen again. The more we practice together the more I start to see hints of Atlas’ curious investigative side emerge. Sometimes so much that he gets himself in trouble a bit.

It makes me smile to see him feel brave enough FINALLY to test his environment ever so gently.

If you are curious to know more about HOW all of this communication is building between Atlas and me, and WHY I believe we can strengthen his new ways of thinking so they completely eclipse his old patterns of being aggressive, please join us on Patreon.com for videos and more questions, answers and discussions. It is fascinating work and I love sharing it with you all!

Horses from many walks of life, communication through body language, tools used only for safety, never to train.

The Goal:

To discover how far Equestrian Art can be developed solely using body language.

Plateaus

Fall is here in the Pacific Northwest and we are blessed with bouts of rain and sprinkles of sunshine intermixed. The leaves are starting to drop from the trees in a torrent of color, and Atlas and I watch all the changes from our safe little spot on the hillside.

It is good there are so many changes around us to watch because within the relationship it seems there are no changes at all.

I can step as close as half a horse length from Atlas, but it is always in the range of tolerance for him, accompanied by tight muscles, a wary eye and indecision, does he pin his ears and threaten me, or run away?

For the most part, I am able to read likely outcomes and adjust my position for the best possible development of feeling. Neither, the fight nor the flight materializes, and I adjust back out to a more comfortable distance on the best feeling/thinking moment possible.

We repeat this dance over and over and over. Investing hours in our plateau of progress.

When I teach students, I explain that plateaus are so very important. We need them to build reliability and stability in new skills. Yet when I am living this one with Atlas I find myself wondering, is this it? What if this plateau lasts the entire year? What if I can’t get closer to him than half a horse length for the entire filming of Taming Wild Evolution?

It is important though to trust the process and simply do the work. Count my breaths, pay attention, and respond, respond, respond. This is how we build the foundation for everything in our future.

Day after day I walk out, and we spend hours practicing the fact that one and two horse lengths apart is completely comfortable now. We invest in living it, feeling it, enjoying it.

I school myself to revel in the success of this, instead of longing for the next variation of connection.

If Atlas were comfortable with me touching him already, that is what I would want to practice most. Instead, we have work to do still before I am allowed that next exciting step of progress. This plateau we are on currently allows me to fully invest and enjoy the distances of the one or two horse lengths we are good at now, that we were not good at when he first came. Every upward step of progress we make is going to need its plateau where we are not doing anything new, we are simply practicing what is recently new to us.

I counsel myself to count my blessings and believe in the power and importance of the plateau, and I am also human, so I worry this plateau is forever!

This week I was granted a little respite from the yearning for progress as it was time to go pick out the second horse for the project. A Mustang, as fresh from the wild as I could find. The travel and the excitement of possibilities thrilled me and yet, as I walked into the adoption facility with thousands of horses to choose from my heart broke and I braced myself against the waves of sadness that came over me.

Why would I do this to myself? The majority of horse owners never set foot in a place like this. They never go look at the masses in need. Out of sight out of mind it isn’t their problem, it is someone else’s problem.

I found myself wishing I was home again peacefully standing with Atlas on our comfortable place of seemingly no progress. Yet here I was, at the Mustang corrals facing the fact I couldn’t do it all, I could only reach for the piece within my grasp, I could only help one of these horses in front of me.

If every horse owner in the United States adopted one mustang, there wouldn’t be enough mustangs to go around and I wouldn’t have this luxury of choice this week as I search for my perfect partner for this particular project.

As it stands, I have a luxury of choice and so I stood on the edge of the corral with a pair of binoculars looking through this group of 70-80 stallions for the one that might come home with me. They all must go somewhere, which one goes somewhere with me?

The Mustangs I was looking at this week had been brought in off the range out of hardship. If they continued in freedom, lack of food and water would lead to starvation and death in numbers unacceptable to us. So, the government rounds them up and brings them into facilities like this. Here they wait for someone to adopt them or they get shipped off to spend the rest of their lives in long term holding.

If one is coming home with me, I have to choose it first. While every horse is as deserving as the next, I do have criteria that will help me find the right horse for my particular situation.

Eyes squinting through my binoculars I look for ease of movement, a horse that is basically comfortable in its body. Natural rhythm in movement is a sign of confidence. I want a horse that has that kind of confidence in their body.

Then I look at height, because I have already chosen the other horse, Atlas, for the film and he happens to be tall, I would like this one to be relatively tall also.

Then I watch the interactions between individuals. Some of them make friends easily and seem to be loyal, always with the same small group. Others have many friends, others are loners and others have many enemies, though honestly I see very little fighting in the group. These horses came from hardship, and now here where they have plenty of food and plenty of water, their priority is to eat, drink and get healthy, fighting amongst each other is not a priority. I am looking for a horse that has many friends and seems to have some skill in relating to others.

Once I have spent hours weighing these factors I find I have written down a list of six numbers that I bring back to the office for more information on age. When the horses are run through the chute for branding, worming and vaccination they also have their teeth checked and approximate age written down.

The six horses I have chosen range from two to twelve years old, and I go back to the pen to watch some more. The two younger horses are out of the running, I need a horse I can potentially ride in the next year and I won’t put weight on the back of a horse still growing. Also, the younger horses still have the potential of being adopted by other people, beautiful horses with so much life ahead of them.

It is the older horses I am drawn to. In the eyes of most adopters these horses know too much, and they will fight training with much more determination and strength than the younger ones. That doesn’t bother me, I want a horse I will learn from as much as anything else.

Two of the older horses are hard to see, they hide behind the masses of their friends and shy away from the camera. These two do not want to be movie stars.

My list is down to a buckskin horse and a brown horse. As I point my camera in through the rails of the arena the brown horse walks over to the hay feeder right next to me, pausing to look at me, look at the horizon, and then back to me. Picture perfect poses against a backdrop of painted hills. He eats a little food, turns to inspect me again, and then goes back to filling his belly and finding his health and strength for whatever comes next. Unconcerned even though he has only been in captivity for a couple of weeks, it becomes clear this is the horse that needs to come home with me. This is my partner without a doubt.

This eight-year-old, brown horse with rhythm and confidence to his movements, this is the horse that will teach me more about connection.

This horse probably isn’t the easiest horse to train. There are plenty of equally good Mustangs in front of me with more natural fear of humans. Those horses would be an easier choice, perhaps even a smarter choice for me.

There is something about this brown stallion though that reminds me of Myrnah, and how grateful I am for everything she taught me. So, I choose him for the fact that I think he will teach me more than I teach him and that is point of the project.

Atlas, whom I already have at home, this new brown stallion and I will discover each other, and along the way we will also discover new ways to develop together. Then I get to pass all I learn on to you.

For now, I am back at home with Atlas enjoying the views from our lovely plateau of progress and dreaming of the day soon ahead when the new stallion arrives to joins us.

Once both horses are here I have this foolish idea that the two stallions are going to take turns having plateaus of progress and I will always get to have the excitement of the upward surge of skill with one or the other… I know that is likely not how it will work in reality, but a girl can dream.

I do hope you join us on Patreon for weekly update videos and an interactive group where questions and answers are pondered.

Horses from many walks of life, communication through body language, tools used only for safety, never to train.

The Goal:

To discover how far Equestrian Art can be developed solely using body language.

Counting Breaths

Mouthful after mouthful of hay, ripped clean out of the hay net with hardly a pause, Atlas has figured out that eating here in his new home is good. The protruding ribs and hip bones are starting to look softer and his muscles are starting to take on curves they didn’t have a week ago.

I notice this, and I notice the raven flying overhead. I notice the deer walking through the yard to our right, and the late insects twirling around in seamlessly aimless spins through the air. I notice the leaves starting to change color on the oak tree outside, and the dead limb on the cherry tree that needs to be trimmed off.

This week I have found I have a great deal of time for noticing things as Atlas buries his head deep into his food and eats like there will never be another meal.

On the one hand it is good that he is eating; he needs it before the weather starts to turn cold and inhospitable. On the other hand, there is a level of obsession that could use softening, and that is where I come in as a leader to help out.

In the first days, anytime I moved too much he would become very afraid and start to run and snort. So my job was to invest in as many hours as needed using purely Passive Leadership. That meant moving as little as possible and making very good decisions about how often to move and how long to be still.

As we moved from the first week to the second week Atlas began to sometimes show disinterest in my company by looking neither toward me nor away, and by completely focusing on what was in front of him as if I was not there. This was exactly the next step I was hoping to see and it gave me permission to start using Supportive Leadership.

Supportive leadership at this stage of the game means I am moving around more than Atlas is. It might be cleaning up the manure from the paddock, it might be trimming the branches of the trees, or taking a walk or stretching my body. As soon as I see a focus change I like (which is pretty much ANY focus change at this point in the process), I return to flow and harmony, matching Atlas to the best of my ability. He has the power to bring us together as partners, and he is learning how to use it.

When Atlas takes that brief moment to look up from his hay, changing focus before reaching for his next bite he is taking an action that brings me back into flow with him, my feet the same as his, my body stillness the same as his, and my focus complementary and watching out for danger while he is vulnerable eating. This enjoyment of togetherness is something Atlas has learned to enjoy over the last week, and now he is learning that something as simple as a focus change is how he can ask for this flow in partnership with me.

Every yin must have it’s yang, and every like must have something in contrast that is less liked. So in counter to the Passive Leadership, pure flow and as little change as possible, we have Supportive Leadership which is movement and change, not a direct request for Atlas to do anything different, simply a set of actions that allow Atlas to realize he can ask for a return to flow and Passive Leadership with a positive change of focus, when and if he chooses.

At the start of this process it was easy to get the paddock cleaned of manure, because Atlas would dive deep into his eating and I would walk back and forth with a manure fork cleaning up and putting everything in the one pile I do hope he starts using more of the time.

Then Atlas realized he had the power to ask me to be still and he started to use it. It also seemed he learned to count. I had decided eight breaths was a reasonable amount of time to be in harmony with Atlas while he fixated on eating hay. If I got to the eighth breath and he had not looked up to notice anything different yet, I went back to whatever job I wanted to get done, then he changed focus and I took one last step and fell back into flow with him. This was all fine until Atlas learned that looking up and around every seventh breath kept me nicely in quiet Passive Leadership with none of that less desirable extraneous movement.

Once Atlas learned that, it started to take me close to two hours to complete the paddock cleaning I had in mind, instead of the five minutes it should have taken. For ten or fifteen minutes at a time Atlas would remember to look up every seven breaths or so and keep me still, then he would forget and become immersed in his hay eating and I would get a little work done before he asked me to came back into flow with him again.

On the one hand I am internally cheering for him that he figured out the pattern and he knew how to positively ask me for what he preferred. On the other hand I was honestly frustrated with how long it took to get a simple job done.

It won’t always be like this though, later on I might have a six or four breath limit on how long I will stand quiet while he hyper focuses on his hay, or I might require two or three or four focus changes before I come back into harmony with him. For now, I have to keep the game simple and easy for Atlas to figure out the rules.

This is about strengthening Atlas’ desire to communicate in a thinking way.

When horses come from stressful pasts they know how to communicate with fight, or with flight, and while we have to listen and understand, that kind of communication is not the kind we want to nurture and support. The thinking kind of communication is what needs to be fostered.

Before I start asking for anything from Atlas, he needs to know that he can ask for what he needs, in a way that is good for both of us.

When we take away all the tools that might be used to cause pressure or direct reward we have no way to manage the fight or flight anymore. In Freedom Based Training® our only course of action is to strengthen the thinking ways of communicating until they are so habituated and normal for the horse that fight and flight don’t feel like good options anymore.

This week I thought I was doing so very well with this process, and we had worked our comfortable flow distance down to half a horse length frequently. I could imagine the feel of Atlas’ fur in my fingers and I thought the touching distance was mere days away.

Then the incident with compost bin happened and I changed my mind.

I was standing a fair distance away, surveying the territory while Atlas dozed next to a big green plastic compost bin in his paddock. He decided to turn around, so I also decided to walk around him in a big circle until I could take the last step and find flow again. Only, Atlas misjudged his distance from the plastic bin and it ever so slightly brushed against his leg as he turned. The speed at which he went from sleepily turning to firing out with a hind hoof and putting it right through the side of the bin was shocking. The loud noise of the plastic breaking sent him in a snorting trot circle that brought him right back to stand next to the now broken bin. It seemed he wasn’t afraid of the bin, only the noise it had made when he destroyed it, once the noise was gone he could return to his nap.

While Atlas returned to his nap, I returned to my watching of the territory, but this time with a newfound respect for the touching distance. I have taken a hint from the hole in the compost bin and I will not be brushing up against Atlas’ body casually any time soon.

When it comes time for us to touch it will be when he is fully awake and aware and has told me he is ready.

For now, I will count my breaths and watch the world go by as Atlas adjusts to our new partnership. Everything will happen when he is ready. Right now he is ready to explore these transitions between Passive Leadership and Supportive Leadership and I will show up consistently to play that game with him for as long as he needs.

There will be a point where he is ready for the next step and it will be natural and easy because I didn’t push for too much too soon.

Count my breaths, pay attention, and respond, respond, respond. This is how we build the foundation for everything in our future.

If you are curious to see the next piece of the relationship puzzle falling into place, I am thrilled to share the journey with you all!

Every Friday for the duration of this project I will be posting a video of our progress on Patreon:

Dates are not firmly set yet, but within the next ten days we go pick up the Mustang stallion that will be joining Atlas and I on this journey. I am so very curious to see who stands out in the crowd and comes home with me to teach us all so much in the year to come.